Advances in semi-conductor processing and logic design have permitted an increase in the amount of logic that may be present on integrated circuit devices. As a result, integrated circuits have increased the number of input, output, power, and ground signals that are used to power the integrated circuits, to communicate with external devices, and to receive data/instructions. Moreover, the physical size of a typical integrated circuit package has grown to accommodate the increase in the number of pins/pads.
Often, integrated circuits are packaged individually and later coupled to a circuit board to communicate with other devices. One method of coupling an integrated circuit to a circuit board, such as a motherboard or expansion card, includes directly soldering the integrated circuit device to the circuit board. Although, this creates an adequate electrical connection between the pads of the device and the circuit board, the direct soldering of the device creates potential upgrade and swapability limitations. For example, if a microprocessor is directly soldered to a motherboard and is later found to be defective, then the microprocessor needs to be de-soldered. The de-soldering, replacement, and re-soldering process is potentially expensive and tedious.
Therefore, it is common in the industry to use compression sockets to couple an integrated circuit to a circuit board. For example, current Intel Micro-processors, from Intel Corporation in Santa Clara, Calif., are typically, connected to a motherboard using a grid array compression socket. A compression socket usually includes some type of compression contact that, when compressed, makes an electrical connection between a pad of an integrated circuit and a pad on the motherboard.
FIG. 1 illustrates a prior art method of compressing compression socket 115 to make an electrical connection between integrated circuit 105 and motherboard 120. One example of integrated circuit 105 is a microprocessor in a package, such as a flip-chip pin grid array (FCPGA) package. Bottom clamping plate 125 in combination with top clamping plate 130 typically exerts a compression force to compress socket 115. Bottom clamping plate 125 is usually mounted on the underside or backside of motherboard 120 to avoid out of specification warping of motherboard 120. However, placement of bottom clamping plate 120 on the backside of motherboard 120 may (1) limit the ability to place other critical components on the backside of the motherboard, such as capacitors or other active or passive devices and (2) create undue stress on the motherboard resulting in cracking or warping.